In the meditation, of course, the question is repeated and repeated until you run out of answers - or so I hear.

Another part of the rejection I mention was the realisation that Buddhism quite simply ignores or dismisses a whole hemisphere of human experience that finds expression in and is enshrined by the mystery religions.

My muse can take the form of a landscape, an era, a style of writing, a piece of music, and, perhaps that which I find strangest of all for a muse, a human female. Of course, she's also adept at taking the form of toothless old Japanese men or young English lads with tattoos.

If we do want to do that [ colonise space to survive, ], then vacuous materialism is not going to be enough for us.

If we do overcome linear time, I would hope this means dwelling more directly in the fertility of the imagination rather than denying it, as some aspects of Buddhism seem to.

I suppose what I can say is that I do feel I have a natural spiritual sensibility.

If there is innocence on Earth again, I tend to imagine it in more [Henry David]Thoreau sort of terms.